At some point a growing B2B company runs out of referrals and starts asking how to get more meetings. There are two common answers: hire a sales development rep, or pay someone outside the company to do it. We sell the second one, so read this with that in mind. We will try to be fair anyway, because a client who should have hired in house is not a good client for us.
What an SDR really costs
The salary is only the start. To work out the true figure, add up:
- Base salary and commission
- Payroll taxes and benefits
- The tools: data, email, dialer, CRM seats
- Someone's time to manage and coach them
- Recruiting, and the time before they are productive
When you total it honestly, one rep in the United States commonly lands near six figures a year or above, depending on your market. Get your own numbers rather than trusting ours. The exercise is the point.
Then there is ramp. New reps usually take a few months to reach full output, and SDR is a role with high turnover. A good rep will often want to get promoted or leave within a couple of years, and then you start over.
What outsourcing really costs
A monthly retainer is usually lower and far easier to stop. You also get a system that already exists: the infrastructure, the data sources, the writing, the process.
There are real downsides, and you should hear them from us:
- They know less about your business. An outside team will never know your product the way someone sitting next to your engineers does. Good ones make up for this with a thorough start, but it is a real gap.
- They work with other clients. You do not get anyone's full attention all the time.
- Quality varies a lot. This industry has plenty of people selling volume with no regard for your reputation. Ask to see the actual messages, and find out who writes them.
- Knowledge can walk out. If you stop, what do you keep? Make sure the answer includes your data and what you learned.
When to hire in house
- Your sale is complicated enough that the first conversation requires real product depth.
- Your market is small and every account matters, so you want a person building real relationships over time.
- You already have a repeatable process and a manager who can run it.
- Outbound has already proven itself and you are ready to scale it.
When to outsource
- You do not yet know if outbound works for you, and you want to find out without a long hiring commitment.
- You have no one to manage a rep. An unmanaged SDR is an expensive way to learn nothing.
- The founder is still the best closer and simply has no time to prospect.
- You want the infrastructure and deliverability handled by people who do it every day.
The order that works for a lot of companies
Outsource first to prove the channel. Learn which audience replies, which message works and what a meeting is worth. If it works and the volume justifies it, you can bring it in house later with a playbook instead of hiring someone and hoping they invent one. We would rather help you get there than pretend it is never the right call. See how we run it.
